


Sparrow

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cabin Fic, Families of Choice, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Prompt Bracket Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 01:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: When Sloan had said please he’d almost said no, said it was the three of them, but she’d said ‘please’ and ‘you’ll hardly see her’, and ‘she has nowhere else to go’, and that, if nothing else, had changed his mind. It’d been the three of them together, for so long, in so many ways and he couldn’t say no to that, to Sloan adopting another orphan even if she was sixteen and enough of a shit to land herself in military school, or so he’d thought.___Young adult found family cabin fic. Will looking back on a summer spent with Mac, while she pesters him about taking a trip into town.





	Sparrow

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a stretch to cover the prompts, but I'm trying to finish up the list before I get massively derailed by another novella-esque AU.

It had been the three of them together for the last three summers, every summer since he’d scrapped together enough money to buy his junker of a car and then a year later replace it with his truck. It’s been three years and three summers so when Sloan had said please he’d almost said no, said it was the three of them, but she’d said ‘please’ and ‘you’ll hardly see her’, and ‘she has nowhere else to go’, and that, if nothing else, had changed his mind. It’d been the three of them together, for so long, in so many ways and he couldn’t say no to that, to Sloan adopting another orphan even if she was sixteen and enough of a shit to land herself in military school, or so he’d thought.

He’d thought that and now he can’t imagine why he had. She was a spitfire, stubborn and loud, but she wasn’t destructive, wasn’t defiant, at least not without reason, and while Sloan was the one who’d been wrong about how often he’d see her, he didn’t mind. She’d become a bit of a shadow, Mac and her book, whatever it was she’d picked out for the day, in the hammock, on a lawn chair by the shed, on a stump by the lake, at the foot of the dock, firmly planted on solid ground. She liked to stay where she could see him and he found that he liked that as odd as the feeling had been in the beginning.

“That’s not right.”

He looks up from the scrap of wood he’d been widdling to see what she’s referring to, but she’s looking at him.

“What’s not?”

“You can’t turn that into a bird.”

“Tables aren’t made from sparrows.” He cracks a smile hoping it might be contagious, but she’s a hard sell this afternoon.

“You said we could go to town tomorrow.”

“I did and we will.” He reassures her gently knowing her doubt has little to do with him.

“But you haven’t finished the shingles.”

“That’s all right.”

“You said we couldn’t go into town until you finished the shingles.”

“It’s not supposed to rain until Sunday. I have a couple of extra days.”

“You said—”

“I know.” He reminds her. “It’s my rule and I’m changing it. It’ll be all right to hold off for a day.”

“You said—”

He slips his knife into a slit in the log behind him to focus on her. “Mac, it’s OK.” 

“I’m not supposed to get in the way.”

“You’re not getting in the way.”

“There’s a hole in the roof.” She reminds him with a pout he knows is covering a quivering lip.

“In the shed. You didn’t put it there.”

“I broke the shelf.”

“Only because you got mad before I did.” 

He’s making light he knows that, carefully avoiding acknowledging the rush of emotion that had led to her slamming a rather heavy bookend onto a precariously attached shelf. He’d had the shelf reattached to the wall, properly this time, within half an hour, but it’d taken her the better part of the afternoon to stop crying, an entire day before she’d believe he wasn’t mad and had stopped apologizing.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s OK that you did. You helped fix it.”

He’d let her stain the wood, an old board he’d dug out from the back of his closet. He’d left her with a brush, a can of stain, and a stack of old newspapers and had let her figure it out. She’d read the entire can, all the fineprint, and pulled several his home renovation manuals down off their shelves before she’d started, but when he’d stopped back in for lunch she’d finished and fallen asleep in a chair next to an open window.

“You’d be done—”

“The shelf took twenty minutes, thirty tops.” He disagrees. “I need a hell of a lot more shingles than that.”

“You—”

“Mac,” he shakes his head, “I’m going to be making shingles from here to kingdom come. The shed needs a new roof. It needs a patch by the end of the day Saturday. We’ll go into town tomorrow and I’ll fix the roof right as rain on Friday.”

She frowns at him, reassured enough that she isn’t arguing, but she is, he knows, still waiting for him to change his mind even though he hardly ever did and never because she told him to.

“Can we have lunch?”

He nods.

“And candy?”

He chuckles at that and she smiles a little, put out that he’s teasing her, but delighted all the same by the prospect. He’d buy her the candy, whatever she wanted if she could tell him how much change he’d have left by the time they got up to the register. It was never more than a dollar or two, but it was enough of an incentive, a sleeve of donuts and a snickers, a couple of Reeses, a week’s supply of old fashioned stick candy. The rest of her math assignments, the ones that counted, were done with the maximum about of groaning and sighing, but the store calculations she’d never made a fuss about.

“And we’ll have to stop by the library, return that book you got out on birds the week before last.”

“Can I take it out again?”

“If nobody else wants it.”

“Nobody else wants it.” She assures him and he snorts. He has a shelf of field guides, several on Eastern birds, but none of them with brightly colored illustrations like the library copy, and none with song descriptions either. She’d read them off to him and make him guess, most of the time it was easier to mimic the sound, whistle and chirp in imitation. The names came easier to him that way. It delighted her.

She liked the blue-headed vireo with it’s splash of greeny yellow, it’s call and response. It talks to itself she’d laughed the first time he’d shown her the one he’d spotted tucked away in a nest. The scarlet tanager was another favorite of hers, with it’s shocking red. They hadn’t yet spotted one, but she insisted on showing him the picture, pushing the book into his lap to make sure he was paying attention.

“The thing sounds like a drunk robin. A drunk sick robin.” He’d grouse occasionally despite the fact that never seemed to dampen her enthusiasm.

“On the off chance someone else needs it. I’ll put a request in for another copy.” He preempts the possible disappointment. “This time of year it’ll only take a couple of days for them to get a book in from another library.”

“You—”

He can tell she wants to tell him he shouldn’t be making the drive into town just for a book. It was only a twenty minute drive when the roads were clear, it wasn’t bad this time of year, but the sentiment wasn’t purely self-deprecating, forty minutes and the cash for gas added up. “I could swing by on my way back from Blue Lake. I’m going to have to make a run to the sanctuary at some point this month.”

“Could I come?”

“I’d have to squeeze you in next to a couple of cat trees.”

“Please?” She asks, eyes lighting up and it takes effort for him not to laugh.

“You can come, but I’m only running up there early next week if we need to pick up your book.”

“OK.” She agrees eagerly and he reaches over to tuck her hair behind her ear knowing the breeze will have blown it free again in a matter of minutes.

It’s been a bit windier than normal. It tended to be like that this time of year as summer slipped into fall. He hadn’t mentioned that, hadn’t pointed out the wind. He didn’t want to upset her, didn’t want to remind her that she’d have to be leaving soon to go back to school.

Sloan had been warning him that it was going to be brutal, that Mac didn’t normally get this attached to a place let alone a person, and even then it was heart wrenching, but he didn’t have the guts to ease her into it, to disappoint her little by little so the leaving came easier. He wasn’t sure that would work anyway, not with Mac, not with her easy laugh and bright eyes.

They’d gone down to the beach earlier, the narrow scrap of sand past the dock before the lake turned, shifting away from his property. She’d stuck her feet in the water, stepped in far enough to let the water lap her ankles before she’d jumped back, skirting away from the tiny fish that had come to investigate the strange appearance of human toes.

Up until a couple of weeks ago she hadn’t let her hand skim the surface of the water. She’d been fishing with him for the last couple of months but up until that point anything that had come from the lake had been his responsibility, the fish and the water weeds.

She’d wanted to know then if he thought she could go swimming and he’d told her he wouldn’t bet against it if she kept working on it. She was a stubborn thing, terrified of open water, but she trusted him enough to know he wasn’t going to pull a fast one, chuck her in or heave a bucket of water in her face.

She needed the reassurance of knowing he was behind her. That was what it was, like with most things, and today for whatever reason she was particularly worried about losing that.

“You going to order another turkey sandwich?”

“What else would I order?”

She frowns a little when he smiles and he has to stop himself from laughing. It’d been the only thing she’d ever ordered, her first pick off the menu her on her first trip into town: a hot turkey sandwich with fries smothered in gravy. “They have a whole menu.”

“That’s your job.”

It was true. He’d made a point of ordering something different every time just to tease her. He was running short on options, but he figured she wouldn’t mind much if he had already. It’d mean she’d been here for a while, something he assumed would be a bit of a novelty for her. She’d been at her current school longer, she’d mentioned starting in the spring a year and a half ago, but he figured that was due more to the fact that the place, as far as he could tell was pretty far out, and less to do with the fact that she wanted to be there because she didn’t. That had been abundantly clear the morning after she’d arrived.

“One randomly selected sandwich, a stop by the library and the store, anything else?”

There wasn’t much else, not in terms of real estate, it was another ten or fifteen minutes to a town with a proper main street, a movie theater and a spattering of touristy art shops, but there was a chance she’d be interested in something else, another go at the water tower hike she kept abandoning, or a walk up to the old smelter, past the abandoned mill houses.

“Can Don make tacos on Saturday?”

“You’ll have to talk to him about that.”

“But we’ll need to pick up the meat.”

He can hear the anxiety creeping in again. “They’ll be back in time for dinner. You can ask him then. I’ll add it to the grocery list just in case.”

“OK.” The concession’s a bit strained. She’s still anxious, but she knows he isn’t going to let her forget. “Do you think he’ll say no?”

“I don’t know, Mac.” He says gently. “If he does we can always pick another day.”

“But what if—” she starts but doesn’t finish. The thought of the what if, what if they ran out of days, out of time, makes her bottom lip quiver and he holds out a hand, pulling it back to brush at the front of his shirt when she steps over toward him.

“You’re going to get wood chips in your hair.” He says even though he knows she doesn’t care. He should’ve thought of that sooner, before he’d offered her the hug, but that’s what she’d come over here for, she’d been all right sitting swinging in the hammock reading before that. She could’ve pestered him from over there if she’d wanted to.

“I don’t want to go.” She whispers wrapping herself around him and he sighs. He doesn’t want her to either, he doesn’t want her to leave, but he knows that telling her that isn’t going to help. It isn’t going to change anything.

“You’re here now.” He tells her instead, the consolation prize that never felt like quite enough when there were months between now and the time when she’d be back here again. “You’re here and I’m here and we’re going to be here all afternoon making shingles and getting wood chips in your hair.”

He lifts one of his arms from around her shoulders to pluck at her hair in illustration and she laughs, a quiet little sound. 

“Can we go back down to the lake first?”

“Again?” He sighs because he knows it’ll make her smile, her answering laugh louder this time.

“Yes. Please. Will, please.” She pulls back to smile at him because she knows he’s teasing.

“Yeah, all right.” He sighs and then laughs. “Let’s go.”


End file.
